Meme from Shorty

4 jobs I have held:

1. Barista/General Manager
2. Teaching Assistant
3. Sessional Instructor
4. Managerial Consultant

4 movies I can watch over and over:

1. Dirty Dancing (I am going to have to agree with Shorty on this)
2. Riding Giants (I am still obsessed with anything surfing related)
3. Step Into Liquid
4. Really...and good 80's teen movie (I own a lot of them).

4 places that I have lived:

1. Alberta
2. British Colombia
3. Hawaii
4. No fourth place as of yet but it looks like it may be Texas (due to a recent offer).

4 categories of TV programming I enjoy:

1. Regular TV Drama (e.g., Grey's Anatomy, Gilmore Girls, Desperate Housewives, etc.)
2. Real Life Network (e.g., Real Housewives of Orange County, Miami Ink, Brat Camp, etc.)
3. Sad, sad, MTV programming (e.g., Real World, The Hills, Bam's Unholy Union, etc.)
4. Regular TV Comedy (e.g., The Office, The Class, How I Met Your Mother, 2 1/2 Men, etc.)

4 places I have been on a holiday:

1. Maui
2. Cuba (which gives me away as a Canadian)
3. Mexico
4. New York City

4 websites I visit daily:

1. All my favorite psychology and medical blogs
2. Facebook (better know as Crackbook)
3. A few Real Estate websites
4. Hotmail/Webmail

4 of my favorite dishes:

1. Tuna and Salmon sashimi
2. Jambalaya from the Blue Dog Cafe (my favorite local Cajun restaurant)
3. My mother's cabbage rolls
4. Mahi Mahi in any form from any restaurant.

4 places I'd rather be right now:

1. On my deck in the sun (without my computer or an article)
2. In Maui kiteboarding (hopefully this will happen soon)
3. Floating down the river in a tube.
4. At Lake Koocanusa wakeboarding (hmmm...there seems to be theme here)

4 other blogger buddies to do this meme:

1. Word Nerd
2. Little Student
3. A day in...
4. There are no others I really know.
   

High School Reunion

For those of you that don't remember I have been planning a 10-year high school reunion for the last 3 months (conveniently with my ex-boyfriend from those days). It was on Saturday night and it went quite well if I must say so myself (or at least the part that I remember clearly - yikes is all I can say about that). We even managed to raise about $2000 for a children's charity.

I really love people and visiting with people but the reunion was a lot like a "7 hour job interview" (Drunken Rowdy Guy, 2007). There was a lot of "how are you? what have you been up to? and what do you do now?". Overall, I must say it was a night filled with old friends and drunken debauchery (apparently I partook in this or at least the pictures suggest this is the case).

Here are a few classic photos:

Mexico

The long awaited trip to Mexico was fantastic!! This was the first time I managed not to bring a speck of work with me and not feel guilty at all (until of course I arrived home to an overwhelming amount of work).

My daily schedule went a bit like this:

7:00 a.m.: Yummy unhealthy breakfast with my better half's sister

8:00 - 10:00 a.m.: Laying in the sun by the pool with a slushy bevy or two

10:00 a.m.: Move to the beach (the bathrooms were quite far from the pool, after lots of careful observation I realized many people who should have made a trip to the bathroom after 15 Coronas did not...hmmm)

12:00 p.m.: Lunch

1:00 - 3:00 p.m.: More beach relaxation time and a little ice cream

3:00 p.m.: Nap time

5:00 p.m.: Pre-dinner drinks

6:30 p.m.: Dinner

7:30 - until well into the night: Post-dinner drinks and the nightly entertainment.

It was a great vacation and just what I needed to be in a better place in my life.

Vacation

It is finally time for me to take an actual vacation, one where my brain gets a rest. Hopefully this will result in an innate ability to be super productive for the rest of the summer. My bags are packed and we (my boyfriend, his sister, and I - we are also meeting his other sister and her husband in PV) are off to stay in the airport hotel tonight because our flight leaves really early tomorrow morning. I am really very excited.

I am parched...and nothing quenches thirst like a swim-up bar.

My suitcase is overweight, this is not surprising considering my inability to pack less that 4 pairs of flip-flops, 3 pairs of heels, and 2 pairs of runners. I have a shoe problem.

Have a great week everyone, I am sure I will in sunny Puerto Vallarta!!

New York and so much more

I am finally back from New York and settled back into a new work routine (that is, where I actually do some). I really, really loved everything that New York had to offer including the Big Conference and some pretty interesting internship interviews. For example, one particularly interesting one went a little like this:

Interviewer: Oh hey...are you Psych-O? I am so sorry I am late (20 min. I sat waiting) last night was a big night (*wink*). Come with me.

So we sit at a table and the interview goes a little like this.

Interviewer: Do you have an questions about our company? (Even though I already had a phone interview with a different guy I'll call Steve, where we took care of all of this).

Psych-O: (Basically I asked all the same questions that I did on the phone)

Interviewer: Oh well...Steve would really be better able to answer these.

Psych-O: Okay... What is the work environment like?

Interviewer: I don't know what that means, can you be more specific?

Psych-O: (Flabbergasted...that is a pretty standard question)

Interviewer: Can you explain your CV to me in great detail?

Psych-O: (a little stunned to say the least)

Now as much as I now really want to intern with this company I turned them down based on their interviewer. I had a few other interviews that went a lot better.

I loved New York but there were definitely a few highlights:

1. Taking the Sex and the City tour (it was so much fun and you get a delicious cupcake and a cosmopolitan).
2. Yankees Game (where we actually ended up getting spit on as a result of cheering for the Toronto Blue Jays - likely we deserved it for being obnoxious since the Blue Jays were winning)
3. Downtown city tour - where we made a stop in Chinatown for some knock-offs (this is a great story I will elaborate on in a moment) and saw Kelly Ripa at a Starbucks in Soho.
4. Seeing Chicago and A Moon for the Misbegotten (staring Kevin Spacey) on Broadway.
5. Taking a 3 hour harbour tour (I would highly recommend this as it was really very interesting)
6. Central Park for some ultimate Frisbee
7. Time Square (both for the Naked Cowboy and for seeing Cory from Boy Meets World) at night in the pouring rain.
8. Staying in an apartment around W 55th and Broadway with all of my close friends from school (even though there was only one shower).

How to buy a knock-off bag in Chinatown (as told by many New Yorkers and experienced by me).

1. Find a small Asian man holding a post card in Chinatown.
2. Say "bag"
3. He will lead you at least four blocks away down some really dark alleys.
4. When you find the building he will lead you through a locked gate and ask if you are cops, if no, you will then proceed to the next step.
5. Go up nine flight of dark, metal stairs.
6. Arrive in a sweatshop filled with women and children making clothes.
7. Go to back room filled with replica bags.
8. Pick what you want and negotiate with a number of scary looking men (using a calculator).
9. Pay and get chased back down different stairs and into a different alley.

You really would think that a bunch of graduate students would be smarter that to get into this type of situation...wouldn't you?

Now I must get to work!!